Jusant: Captivating and Relaxing until the end

The year 2023 will certainly be one of the years to be remembered for great game launches. There are so many good experiences that it is difficult to keep track and the avid player has to be careful not to miss any.

In the middle of all this Jusant appears, with a proposal for climbing and puzzle gameplay. Not only that, it is also one of the games to use the Unreal Engine 5 graphics engine with its new state-of-the-art graphics features.

In Jusant, it’s one hand at a time

Jusant starts with a very beautiful presentation, very beautiful settings that, in many parts, look like a painting. Here the protagonist finds himself at what appears to be the bottom of a sea where the water has disappeared and only boats, flares and other abandoned objects remain.

With a mute protagonist, the story is told visually and through notes written by other characters in the story who passed by some time ago, as with the disappearance of the water people tried to find other alternatives.

Everything is done carefully and the player and spectators can understand what the game wants to tell. And there is also a small mysterious creature that accompanies the protagonist on his journey.

The gameplay is the main part, where the player may be surprised at first but later becomes very intuitive. Here, each character’s arm is controlled by two buttons and so the player can direct where to hold to climb the many walls present in the game.

Of course there is an energy bar to add a challenge factor, where we have a small layer for the player to make more efficient decisions when climbing. But the player doesn’t need to be too worried about the difficulty, as the game offers a feature where we can place anchor points so as not to lose our climbing progress.

The puzzles are often very natural and I didn’t find any imbalance in difficulty or even get lost where I should go. This is a very positive point about the game, as those who haven’t played it may think that everything looks the same, but there are many details to notice.

And speaking of details, the graphics are very beautiful. Using a state-of-the-art engine, the game has well-crafted lighting and lots of detail when entering darker places with little light. It is indeed a showcase item for Unreal Engine 5.

All this with a very calm and relaxing soundtrack, which grows in tone as the player progresses.

Be careful with the climb!

If we are going to talk about problems, Jusant has few technical problems. The most frequent problems I faced were with the ability to use momentum to reach higher places, which sometimes caused the character to end up moving away from the wall and not holding onto the desired platforms. This is not a break in progress, but it happens quite frequently.

And it’s okay to have a mute protagonist, but as there is much of the story in texts spread throughout the scenarios, it would be interesting to at least do dubbing work for these texts, especially those written by the character Bianca, which the player will encounter a lot.

And taking advantage of the lack of dubbing work, reading for viewers ends up falling to the streamer. This may be natural, but because there is a lot of text, it can end up being a little tiring having to read all the texts and still interact with the public. Of course, I want to make it clear that this may be my personal vision.

I had no problems running the game, which is excellent, as more people can enjoy this wonderful experience.

Katsutoshi